The following comes from TJ Walker’s upcoming book “The Wisdom of Your Audience”. Consistently, the worst advice speakers and presenters get, comes from everyone who is NOT your audience. The following gives examples of some of the WORST advice people are often given. It is followed by the advice of your audience. Listen to them. They are your true judge and jury.

How many bullet points should I use on each page of my Power Point Presentation?

Your Marketing Director: “I’d like to limit the number, but we have to be realistic. We are going to need to put at least 20 bullet points per slide.”

Your PowerPoint slide producer: “We should limit the slides to three bullet points per page.”

You: “I’d like to limit the bullet points, but what if I forget something important. I’d better play it safe by putting 15-20 points per slide. That way I’ll never run out of intelligent things to say.”

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Your audience: “Why do you think we want to stare at bullet points? Is that really the most creative thing you can do with a giant screen? We can read text on our own time. We don’t need you to read to us. Why don’t you actually do something that isn’t incredibly lazy and boring, i.e., show us pictures, images, or graphs that convey information visually.” 

Tags: bullet points, powerpoint presentation

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:52 am and is filed under PowerPoint, Presentation Skills Training, Public Speaking Skills, Speaking, keynote speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.